Backstage at Antiques Roadshow

While I was in Savannah last week, PBS was filming an episode of Antiques Roadshow, a show I’ve always enjoyed. On a lark, my girlfriend Patricia and I walked over and took a backstage tour with a woman who worked for Georgia Public Broadcasting. This is what we saw:

Hundreds of people who had won free tickets in an online lottery lined up at the entrance to the Georgia Railroad Museum. Most carried small items in tote bags. One woman pulled a grandfather clock in a little wagon. Another wheeled a wooden chest with a sailing ship painted on its lid.

Once they showed their printed tickets to security, visitors were directed to the triage tent. There, nattily dressed experts in bow ties and pocket squares gave their items the once-over. If one was worthy of further evaluation, their admissions leaflet was stamped with one of 23 specialist areas, such as Chinese art, ceramics, dolls, sports memorabilia, games and toys.

At the specialist booths, guests would queue up again, some under the hot Georgia sun and others beneath the shade of a towering locomotive in the museum’s roundhouse. They might wait 10 or 20 minutes to be seen at a busy booth, such as furniture or paintings. Everyone seemed cheerful and relaxed, wondering if they had a prize.

The show’s experts evaluated some 1,300 objects in one day at the railroad museum. Of these, about 10% are selected for a filmed appraisal with well-known experts like Leigh Keno or Lark Mason. And of these 130 filmed scenes, approximately 30 will make it into the final broadcast.

No doubt we’ll see many wonderful and valuable objects when the Savannah show is broadcast in 2026. Yet the odds of making it into that broadcast are 30 out of 1,300, or roughly 2%. As I looked about the grounds, I saw people lugging cherished objects, like ladderback chairs or dolls from the 1970s. I didn’t see anything that seemed of great value.

Still, I didn’t meet any disappointed people at the taping. At the feedback booth, fans of the show shared that they were excited just to be there. They had the additional satisfaction of unraveling the mystery of a family heirloom.

Like the woman at our inn, who at breakfast the next day showed us what she’d had appraised. It was a green soapstone carving of two monkeys flanking a small flower vase. Bow-tie wearing expert Lark Mason told her it was a ceremonial object given to Chinese monks who had returned from overseas missionary trips.

That’s a fascinating story. As to its value, Mason said it was worth about $50. And that’s what the woman said she had paid for it about 40 years earlier.